‘Hi,’ she whispered. ‘I’m Dottie, Micky’s wife.’
‘Charles Paris.’
‘How’s it going?’
‘Pretty good.’
She nodded and her alert hazel eyes flickered around the room, taking everyone in. They lingered on Lesley-Jane Decker. ‘Who’s that?’ she hissed.
Charles gave the girl’s name.
‘Micky made a play for her yet?’
He was surprised. ‘I don’t know. I haven’t been round much this week.’ Then, curious, ‘Why? Has he got a roving eye?’
‘Haven’t we all?’ she said. Her tone was mocking, but she was fully aware of the sexual nature of her remark.
The play ended. Malcolm Harris started to applaud and some of the others joined in. Michael Banks grinned and went across to have a word with Lesley-Jane. After Dottie’s remark, Charles couldn’t help thinking that the two of them did look rather intimate.
Peter Hickton clapped his hands again. ‘O.K., thank you all very much. We really are getting somewhere. There are a few scenes I’d just like to run through before we break and — ’
‘Sorry, love,’ said Michael Banks gently. ‘Got to go. Off for the weekend, as I said, old boy.’ He waved vaguely to Dottie.
‘But I really think we should — ’ the director began.
‘Sorry. No can do.’
‘Are you sure you can’t just stay for — ’
Michael Banks shook his head charmingly. ‘Sorry, love.’
‘Oh. Oh, well. . You will have a look at the lines over the weekend, won’t you? I mean, the performance is coming fine, but the lines are. .’
‘Course I will, old boy, course I will. Scout’s honour. Cross my heart.’
‘Oh, and I have got a note on — ’
‘Got to go.’ Michael Banks went across to get his coat and brief-case.
‘Lines a problem?’ Dottie whispered to Charles.
‘Seem to be.’
She nodded knowingly.
‘He starts all right,’ said Charles, ‘but he can’t keep it up.’
‘You can say that again.’
Once again, there was no doubt of the sexual overtone in Dottie Banks’s words.
CHAPTER SIX
The weekend with chums in Chichester did not seem, on the Monday’s showing, to have left Micky Banks much time to look at his lines. If anything, he was worse after the break; even the words he had remembered the week before were now coming out jumbled and confused.
‘Don’t worry,’ he kept saying. ‘Don’t worry, Peter old boy. They will come. Just out of practice learning, you know. That’s the trouble with doing all these films and tellies — you just have to remember a little bit for a short take. Forget what it’s like learning a long part. But don’t worry — be all right on the night. I once got up lago in three days when I was in rep. If we just press on with the rehearsal, it’ll come.’
But it didn’t. And indeed it was very difficult to press on with the rehearsal. In every production there comes an awkward jerky stage when the cast abandon their books for the first time, but for The Hooded Owl it seemed to be going on longer than usual.
And it had a knock-on effect. George Birkitt got lazy about learning his lines too. Charles remembered from working on The Strutters with him that George had always had an approximate approach to the text, relying, as did so many television actors, on a sort of paraphrase of the speeches which homed in on the right cue. Strong direction could make him more disciplined and accurate, but Peter Hickton was not well placed to bully George Birkitt. The latter could always turn round — and indeed did turn round-and say, ‘Sorry, love, I don’t mind working on them, but there doesn’t seem a lot of point in my giving up my free evenings when the star is unwilling to do the same.’
He couldn’t resist putting a sneer into the words. In spite of the success of Fly-Buttons, George Birkitt was not yet a star — and quite possibly never would be. He lacked the necessary effortless dominance of character. Deep down he was aware of this fact, and it hurt.
Charles hoped that George’s assumption was right, that Michael Banks’s difficulty in retaining the lines was just the product of laziness. If that were the case, then atavistic professional instincts and the terrifying imminence of the first night would ensure that he knew the part by the time they opened. But Charles had a nagging fear that it wasn’t that, that Michael Banks really was trying, that he did go through the lines time after time in the evenings, but that his mind could no longer retain them. If that was the situation, it was very serious. And through the star’s casual bonhomie at rehearsals, Charles thought he could detect a growing panic as the awful realisation dawned.
They were making so little progress on the Monday that Peter Hickton took the sensible decision and dismissed most of the cast at lunchtime; he would sit down with Michael Banks and George Birkitt all afternoon and just go through the lines. It was a ploy that often worked. Apart from the shame of being kept in like a naughty schoolboy, the constant automatic repetition of the lines taken out of the context of the play could often lodge them in the leakiest actor’s mind.
And on the Tuesday morning it was seen to have had some effect. George Birkitt, whose main problem with the lines had been an unwillingness to look at them, showed a marked improvement. Michael Banks, too, started with renewed confidence and got further into the text than he ever had before without error. Relief settled on the rehearsal room. When he was flowing in the part, the company could feel his great presence and their confidence in the whole enterprise blossomed.
The first breakdown came about twenty minutes into the play. Needless to say, it was in a big speech. As ever, the start was confident. And, as ever, about three sentences in, Michael Banks faltered. The entire cast held their breath, as if watching a tightrope-walker stumble, and all let out a sigh of relief when he managed to right himself and make it through to the end of the speech.
But it was a symptom of things to come. In the next big speech, Michael Banks again stumbled. Again he extricated himself, but this time at some cost to the text. What he said was a vague approximation of what Malcolm Harris had written, and he didn’t even give the right cue to George Birkitt, who spoke next.
This threw George, and he got his lines wrong. Being George, he didn’t try to cover the fluff and press on; instead he said, ‘Sorry, love, but I can’t be expected to get my lines right if I get the wrong feed, can I?’
The scene lurched forward again, but its momentum was gone. Michael Banks’s eyes were lit with the panic of a man about to dry. And sure enough, he did. Peter Hickton tried another approach and threw one of his little tantrums. This didn’t help at all. It just soured the atmosphere of the rehearsal, and left Michael Banks looking pained, like some huge animal, beaten for a transgression he does not understand.
For a show due to open for its first public preview in a week’s time The Hooded Owl was in far from promising shape.
There was a run on the Tuesday afternoon for the producers. Paul Lexington and Bobby Anscombe sat through the whole play in silence.
It was excruciating. Consciousness of the audience made Michael Banks nervous, and nervousness scrambled the lines in his head even further. George Birkitt got through with only one prompt, but his performance was spoiled by the smug smile he wore throughout at the star’s expense.
Eventually, half-way through the second act, as the play’s climax approached, Michael Banks could stand it no longer. He snatched the prompt copy from the Stage Manager and read the rest of his part. The strength of the performance, as ever, increased, but it was worrying.
The play finished and there was silence. The actors drifted away from the centre of the room to the safety of the walls, where they picked up crosswords, fiddled with knitting, lit cigarettes and gave generally unconvincing impressions of people who weren’t worried about what was about to happen.